Search results matching tag 'sqlpass'http://sqlblog.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?o=DateDescending&tag=sqlpass&orTags=0Search results matching tag 'sqlpass'en-USCommunityServer 2.1 SP2 (Build: 61129.1)Learning through othershttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/archive/2014/11/11/learning-through-others.aspxTue, 11 Nov 2014 06:01:45 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:56394rob_farley<p>This PASS Summit was a different experience for me – I wasn’t speaking. I’ve presented at three of the five PASS Summits I’ve been to, where the previous one I’d not spoken at was 2012, while I was a PASS Director (and had been told I shouldn’t submit talks – advice that I’d ignored in 2013). I have to admit that I really missed presenting, both in 2012 and this year, and I will need to improve my session abstracts to make sure I get selected in future years.</p> <p>I’m not a very good ‘session attendee’ on the whole – it’s not my preferred style of learning – but I still wanted to go, because of the learning involved. Sometimes I will learn a lot from the various things that are mentioned in the few sessions I go to, but more significantly, I learn a lot from discussions with other people. I hear what they are doing with technology, and that encourages me to explore those technologies further. It’s not quite at the point of learning by osmosis simply by being in the presence of people who know stuff, but by developing relationships with people, and hearing them speak about the things they’re doing, I definitely learn a lot.</p> <p>Of course, I don’t get to know people for the sake of learning. I get to know people because I like getting to know people. But of course, one of the things I have in common with these people is SQL, and conversations often come around to that. And I know that I learn a lot from those conversations. I don’t have the luxury of living near many (any?) of my friends in the data community, and spending time with them in person definitely helps me.<a href="http://chrisyatessql.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/t-sql-tuesday-60-something-new-learned/" target="_blank"><img title="TSQL2sDay150x150" style="border-top:0px;border-right:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom:0px;float:right;padding-top:0px;padding-left:0px;margin:5px;border-left:0px;display:inline;padding-right:0px;" border="0" alt="TSQL2sDay150x150" src="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/TSQL2sDay150x150_4550D970.jpg" width="154" align="right" height="154" /></a></p> <p>And it’s not just SQL stuff that I learn. <a href="http://chrisyatessql.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/t-sql-tuesday-60-something-new-learned/" target="_blank">This month’s T-SQL Tuesday</a> (for which this is a post) is hosted by <a href="http://chrisyatessql.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Chris Yates</a> (<a href="http://twitter.com/yatessql" target="_blank">@YatesSQL</a>), who I got to run alongside on one of the mornings. Even that was a learning experience for me, as we chatted about all kinds of things, and I listened to my feet hitting the ground – another technique I learned from a community – and made sure I stuck to my running form to minimise the pain I’d be feeling later in the day. Talking to Chris while I ran helped immensely, and I was far less sore than I thought I might be.</p> <p>On the SQL side, I got to learn about how excited people are about scale-out, with technologies like Stretched Tables coming very soon. As someone involved in the Parallel Data Warehouse space (and seriously – how thrilled was I to be able to chat with Dr Rimma Nehme, who was involved in the PDW Query Optimizer), scale-out is very much in my thoughts, and seeing what Microsoft is doing in this space is great – but learning what other people in the community are thinking about it is even more significant for me.</p> <p><a href="http://twitter.com/rob_farley" target="_blank">@rob_farley</a>&#160;</p> <p>PS: This is the 60th T-SQL Tuesday. Huge thanks to <a href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic" target="_blank">Adam Machanic</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/adammachanic" target="_blank">@adammachanic</a>) for starting this, and giving me something to write about each month these last five years.</p>MVP/SQLPASS Summit Wrapup From a Non-Attendeehttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson/archive/2014/11/09/mvp-sqlpass-summit-wrapup-from-a-non-attendee.aspxMon, 10 Nov 2014 01:39:00 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:56349drsql<P class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt;"><o:p><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>&nbsp;</FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;"><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>(Or “How I Sort of Attended PASS This Year After All and It Wasn’t as Horrible as it Might Have Been”)<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></I></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>Wow, my experience at this year’s </FONT><A href="http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/summit.aspx"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>MVP Summit</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> and </FONT><A href="http://www.sqlpass.org/Events/PASSSummit.aspx"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>PASS Summit</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> was not at all what I had expected it to be for me just weeks ago when I </FONT><A href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson/archive/2014/10/07/pass-summit-attendance-advice.aspx"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>was planning my trip</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>. Life intervened, and as my blog post last week </FONT><A href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson/archive/2014/10/25/why-i-am-not-going-to-pass-this-year.aspx"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>here</FONT></A><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3><SPAN class=MsoHyperlink><U><FONT color=#0563c1> explained</FONT></U></SPAN>, the short of it is that I was unable to attend either summit for less than fun reasons. As a shut in who has always stayed in connection with the SQL community, particularly at the summits here in the US, it was going to be pretty hard to completely stay on the sidelines. So I had to choose: turn off my computer and live on pain meds for the week, or tune in to </FONT></FONT><A href="http://www.twitter.com/"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>twitter</FONT></A><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3> and see what was going on (still aided by pain meds!). My eventual decision was based on the fact that when I attend the summit, I tweet about how it is going for someone out there so what the heck. I decided to tune in, and it turned out that the people I was tweeting to were people like myself this year, who can’t make it for some reason.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>I am glad I did, as it turned out to be pretty cool (once the MVP Summit had passed at least.)<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>This year the MVP Summit for us SQL–ers was first up, attached to PASS. I have missed an MVP Summit before, and just like then, it sucked to be home. The information we get there is considered so NDA that we can really only discuss stuff from presentations we attend with other people that we see attending the same session. There is a great twitter account for the MVP program </FONT><A href="http://twitter.com/mvpaward"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>@MVPAward</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> where lots of fun information is shared, but nothing of particular technical interest. Twitter feeds of other MVPs attending tend to be like this one from one of my heroes, </FONT><A href="http://www.twitter.com/arnieRowland"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Arnie Rowland</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> (who is not to be confused with </FONT><A href="http://twitter.com/rob_farley"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Rob Farley</FONT></A><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>, mind you…):</FONT></FONT></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><A href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/mvpsummit?src=hash"><SPAN style="COLOR:#2b7bb9;text-underline:none;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><FONT size=3><STRONG>#mvpsummit</STRONG></FONT></SPAN></A><SPAN style="COLOR:#292f33;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><FONT size=3><STRONG> Great discussion about {NDA} led by {NDA}.Some questions about {NDA} expessed {NDA}. However </STRONG></FONT></SPAN><A href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HugAChuck?src=hash"><SPAN style="COLOR:#2b7bb9;text-underline:none;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><FONT size=3><STRONG>#HugAChuck</STRONG></FONT></SPAN></A><SPAN style="COLOR:#292f33;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><FONT size=3><STRONG> is NOT covered by NDA.<o:p></o:p></STRONG></FONT></SPAN></P></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3><FONT face=Calibri>It is fun (and something I usually do yearly too), but when you don’t know what the {NDA} is replaced with&nbsp;and REALLY want/need to… well, it stinks. When you know what #HugAChuck is, it is even more fun, but we won’t go into that either. <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>On Wednesday, the PASS Summit started. Since at least 50% of the people I follow and would follow me would be at or interested in PASS, the twitter feed exploded with glorious noise on the </FONT><A href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23summit14"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>#summit14</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> hashtag. Keeping up was kind of fun, but still felt pretty empty. At that point I was really close to just sulking and turning off twitter. But then I happened upon a twitter conversation between </FONT><A href="http://www.twitter.com/danisql"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>@DaniSQL</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> and </FONT><A href="http://www.twitter.com/sqlserver"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>@SQLServer</FONT></A><FONT size=3><FONT face=Calibri>:<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P class=MsoNormal style="BACKGROUND:#f5f8fa;MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;LINE-HEIGHT:13.5pt;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;"><SPAN style="COLOR:#292f33;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><STRONG>@DaniSQL: Sad and jealous I won't be at </STRONG></SPAN><A href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/sqlpass?src=hash"><SPAN style="TEXT-DECORATION:none;COLOR:#2b7bb9;text-underline:none;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><STRONG>#sqlpass</STRONG></SPAN></A><SPAN style="COLOR:#292f33;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><STRONG> this year.<o:p></o:p></STRONG></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><SPAN style="COLOR:#292f33;LINE-HEIGHT:107%;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><STRONG>@SQLServer: </STRONG></SPAN><A href="https://twitter.com/DaniSQL"><SPAN style="TEXT-DECORATION:none;COLOR:#2b7bb9;LINE-HEIGHT:107%;text-underline:none;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><STRONG>@DaniSQL</STRONG></SPAN></A><SPAN style="COLOR:#292f33;LINE-HEIGHT:107%;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><STRONG> Not to worry, we've got you covered! You can watch the </STRONG></SPAN><A href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/summit14?src=hash"><SPAN style="TEXT-DECORATION:none;COLOR:#2b7bb9;LINE-HEIGHT:107%;text-underline:none;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><STRONG>#summit14</STRONG></SPAN></A><SPAN style="COLOR:#292f33;LINE-HEIGHT:107%;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><STRONG> live stream here with your account info: </STRONG></SPAN><A title=http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/PASStv.aspx href="http://t.co/6UluKbUCvn" target=_blank><SPAN style="TEXT-DECORATION:none;COLOR:#2b7bb9;LINE-HEIGHT:107%;text-underline:none;mso-ansi-language:EN';"><STRONG>http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/PASStv.aspx&nbsp;</STRONG></SPAN></A><o:p></o:p></P></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3><FONT face=Calibri>I had heard of PASS TV before, but never really gave it much thought in the past since I had always been at the Summit live and in person. I thought it was probably just advertisements and interviews, but it turned out to be something more. In addition to the aforementioned stuff that was there but not attention holding for hours, it turns out that they also streamed quite a few full sessions, and most of them were live-as they were happening sessions by some of the big names.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>I saw whole&nbsp;sessions (or partial sessions when doctors/nurses felt the need to interrupt!) from </FONT><A href="http://twitter.com/kleegeek"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>David Klee</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>, </FONT><A href="http://twitter.com/adammachanic"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Adam Machanic</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>, </FONT><A href="http://twitter.com/sqlqueen"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Kalen Delaney</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>, </FONT><A href="http://twitter.com/KimberlyLTripp"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Kimberly Tripp</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>, </FONT><A href="http://twitter.com/way0utwest"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Steve Jones</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>, </FONT><A href="http://twitter.com/SQLInTheWild"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Gail Shaw</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> and </FONT><A href="https://twitter.com/GFritchey"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Grant Fritchey</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>… It was awesome because it was just like being there for a small slice of time… I didn’t get to see the keynotes (though I may try to one day soon since they are still available via </FONT><A href="http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/PASStv.aspx"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>PASSTV</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> (everything is now on </FONT><A href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoGAcXKPcRvanix7u9eqg_qt1tp849rX3"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>YouTube</FONT></A><FONT size=3><FONT face=Calibri>), or some of the other sessions that were transmitted from this year, but in reality, I attended as many sessions this year at PASS as I could have if I had attended in person.<SPAN style="mso-tab-count:1;"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3><FONT face=Calibri>What I did miss was seeing everyone in person and getting to do most of my volunteer work. Having been an MVP for 11 years, and going to the PASS Summit for even longer, I have a lot of folks that I have seen there yearly that never make it to the events in the region I frequent.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun:yes;">&nbsp; </SPAN>I had scheduled time in the community zone, at a birds of the feather luncheon, and a couple of abstract writing sessions. These I just completely missed. One bright note was that there was one meeting that a sub-committee of the program committee that we had scheduled to do face-to-face that I was able to attend via phone. Even with my complex scheduling, (I had a visitor to cut short and a therapy session that I had to reschedule), I was able to participate in that meeting and feel somewhat productive. I was very appreciative to that team for letting me stay on task and not miss out.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3><FONT face=Calibri>Taking in sessions was one half of the picture, giving me a sense of connection, but if you add to this the great community that we gave me a lot of moral support for my ordeal through the twitter channels (as well as a lovely gift sent to me from my friends at the Friends of Red-Gate program), I felt as connected as I believe I could without stepping on an airplane (something that I pretty much only do<SPAN style="mso-spacerun:yes;">&nbsp; </SPAN>when I get the opportunity to go out to the Microsoft area of the country for these two conferences or something else SQL Server related…well, okay, sometimes I will fly to Disney World, but that is off topic for sure).<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>So here’s to the 2014 MVP and PASS Summits that were as good as I could have ever expected. And to their 2015 siblings that by golly I will be in attendance for, this time on Hip 3.0 (which is going to be hippest hip yet.)</FONT><o:p></o:p></P>PASS Summit WIT Lunchhttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/archive/2014/11/06/pass-summit-wit-lunch.aspxThu, 06 Nov 2014 21:05:56 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:56305rob_farley<p>With the pleasant sound of cutlery on crockery, those lucky enough to secure tickets to the WIT Lunch at the PASS Summit get to listen to an interview with Kimberly Bryant, who is the founder of a non-profit organisation called Black Girls Code – helping teenaged girls from low-privilege communities to get into technology.</p> <p>She calls herself an Accidental Entrepreneur, driven by her passion to see the less-privileged have opportunities to explore an industry that was dominated by a very different part of the community. Her daughter was interested in tech, and went on a tech-focused summer camp, where she was the only non-white kid, and one of only three girls. With a crowd of about 40, that was less than ten percent of the camp. </p> <p>What Kimberly saw at the camp, and in other environments that are dominated by a particular demographic, was that the people who were providing for the group would cater for the masses, and not the minorities. From an economic perspective, I’m sure this makes sense. If you’re going to find something that caters for a particular cluster of people, a particular type of person, then targetting the larger clusters is likely to give the ‘best results’. But (my opinion) this is ignoring the fact that the larger clusters of people tend to be catered for by just about anything. In my experience, if someone is part of a larger cluster, they have a large amount of support from their peers already, and need less from the organisers. But if the organisers can ensure that the edges of the group are looked after, then the ones in the middle will still be just fine, and the whole group will be encouraged.</p> <p>Diversity is something that the IT industry suffers from, and I do mean ‘suffer’. Without good diversity, our industry is held back. Stupidly, our industry keeps shooting itself in the foot, and it’s the larger clusters of people – I guess that means people like me – who need to take a stand when we see things that would alienate minority groups.</p> <p>Kimberly Bryant points out that teams need diversity, and that hiring decisions need to ensure that they don’t turn away people because of diversity. For myself, as a business owner, I hope that I never turn someone away because of diversity, because I do agree that teams need diversity. What I love the most though, is that what Kimberly has done is to develop programs to make sure that people from a particular minority group present as stronger candidates to hiring managers.</p> <p>Let’s encourage people from minority groups to get into IT. We’ll all benefit from it. </p> <p><a href="http://twitter.com/rob_farley" target="_blank">@rob_farley</a></p>Dr Rimma Nehme at the PASS Summithttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/archive/2014/11/06/dr-rimma-nehme-at-the-pass-summit.aspxThu, 06 Nov 2014 17:41:22 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:56301rob_farley<p>This Summit’s presentation from Microsoft Research Labs is from Dr Rimma Nehme, bucking the trend of having presentations from Dr David DeWitt. I’m really pleased to be able to hear from her, because she’s an absolute legend.</p> <p>Among her qualifications is work on the PDW Query Optimizer – a topic closer to me than probably any other area of SQL Server. I just wish I had known this a few minutes ago when I met her, but I’m sure she’ll chat more freely after her big presentation.<img style="float:right;margin:5px;display:inline;" alt="http://www.sqlpass.org/images/speakers/RimmaNehme588.png" src="http://www.sqlpass.org/images/speakers/RimmaNehme588.png" width="150" align="right" height="192" /></p> <p>Today she’s talking about Cloud Computing, which is great because the cloud space has changed significantly in recent years, and it’s good to hear from Microsoft Research Labs again. For example, analysing the power-effectiveness of a data centre by comparing the total power used by a data centre against the computing power of a data centre. This leads to exploring more effective systems, such as evaporative cooling (which is used by many Australian homes and businesses, of course), making energy-responsibility a key component of cloud computing. With such an effort being put into cloud computing, the globally-responsible option is to use the cloud.</p> <p>The five key drivers for cloud that Dr Nehme listed are:</p> <ul> <li>Elasticity</li> <li>No CapEx</li> <li>Pay Per Use</li> <li>Focus on Business</li> <li>Fast Time To Market</li> </ul> <p>These are all huge, of course, and the business aspects are massive. It’s increasingly easy to persuade businesses to move to the cloud, but the exciting thing about the technologies that have been discussed this week is the elasticity point.</p> <p>Microsoft is doing huge amounts of work to let people scale out easily. New technologies such as Stretched Tables will allow people to have hybrid solutions between on-prem and cloud like never before. With a background in the PDW Query Optimizer, Dr Nehme is the perfect person to be exploring what’s going on with spreading the load across multiple cloud-based machines for these scale-out solutions.</p> <p>The cloud means that many database professionals worry about their jobs. I’m sure people felt the same way when the industrial revolution came through. People who work on production-lines have been replaced by robots, and database administrators who only do high availability don’t need to handle that in the cloud space. But they will not be redundant. Dr Nehme just said “Cloud was not designed to be a threat to DBAs”, and this is significant. The key here is that we have more data than ever, and we need to be able to use computing power effectively. </p> <p>We can’t keep going with the amount of data that is appearing, and we need to be more responsible than ever.</p> <p>Great keynote, Dr Nehme. I hope this is the first of many keynotes from you.</p> <p><a href="http://twitter.com/rob_farley" target="_blank">@rob_farley</a></p>PASS Summit – Thursday Keynotehttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/archive/2014/11/06/pass-summit-thursday-keynote.aspxThu, 06 Nov 2014 16:41:00 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:56299rob_farley<p>It’s good to point out it’s still only Thursday, as my laptop tells me that it’s already Friday.</p> <p>Today is the second of only two keynotes this Summit, which means that it’s the opportunity to hear from Microsoft Research Labs about what’s going on with data from their perspective. </p> <p>It’s also when we get to hear from the PASS VPs – community members that I used to serve with on the PASS Board of Directors – about how PASS is doing from a Financial and Marketing perspective.</p> <p>One of the interesting things about PASS is that there are reserves of over a million dollars. I mention this because it’s an area that some people is quite “interesting” for a community and non-profit organisation, but I want to point out that these savings help let PASS be more free in what they (we?) do. Having a million dollars in the bank means that PASS can reach out and do things that will serve the community, even if it seems like it could be risky. There is a lot of risk in running the Summit every year, and this is the most obvious area that PASS could need money to cover costs that might not come back if, say, there’s another volcano eruption in Iceland. I saw first-hand the freedom that PASS had because of the reserves (although some risks were still very high and freedom does not mean irresponsibility), and I know this is a good thing.</p> <p>From the marketing perspective, the celebration of individuals who have gone beyond the norm is a great part of the Summit event, and the PASSion Award winner has been announced as Andrey Korshikov. This guy has done so much for the Russian Data Community, making him the most influential SQL person in the largest country of the world. You can’t go past that…</p> <p><a href="http://twitter.com/rob_farley" target="_blank">@rob_farley</a></p>Keynote technologies – new or not?http://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/archive/2014/11/05/keynote-technologies-new-or-not.aspxWed, 05 Nov 2014 18:08:55 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:56271rob_farley<p>So I’m sitting in the <a href="http://sqlpass.org" target="_blank">PASS Summit</a> keynote, and there are some neat things being shown.</p> <p>Something that just appeared on the screen was around having the location of shoppers being shown on a plan of a store. There were some ‘Oohs’ coming from around the room, as they mentioned that Kinect was being used to track locations. Hotspots were appearing on a time-driven picture.</p> <p>But the thing that I think is most exciting is that this is almost all achievable right now. Collecting information from Kinect is something that my friends <a href="http://soulsolutions.com.au" target="_blank">John &amp; Bronwen</a> have been presenting about for years, and displaying things on custom maps in Power BI (complete with hotspots) is also very achievable. If you don’t know how to do this, get along to <a href="http://hopefoley.com" target="_blank">Hope Foley</a>’s session this afternoon (Wed 5th), as she explores more of what’s possible with Power Map. She wrote a post recently about <a href="http://hopefoley.com/2014/11/02/custom-maps-in-power-map" target="_blank">Custom Maps in Power Map</a>, which is a great blog post, walking through how to show spatial data on the plan of a building, playing it against a time dimension.</p> <p><img style="margin:5px;" src="https://hopefoley.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/custommap3.png" width="600" height="338" /></p> <p>The stuff in the keynote is excellent – much of it is future, but if you’re at the PASS Summit, you can be having conversations with many of the world’s best experts about how to revolutionise your data story, not just in the future, but right now.</p> <p><a href="http://twitter.com/rob_farley" target="_blank">@rob_farley</a></p>PASS Summit keynotehttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/archive/2014/11/05/pass-summit-keynote.aspxWed, 05 Nov 2014 17:35:23 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:56268rob_farley<p>The <a href="http://sqlpass.org" target="_blank">PASS Summit</a> has kicked off again with a tremendous keynote from Ranga. He's been in the role at Microsoft for a little over a year now, and has really come into his own, as can be seen by the presentation this morning. The changes to the data picture haven't changed hugely over the past year, although the &quot;Internet of Things&quot; space is increasing quickly. </p> <p><img title="image1" style="border-top:0px;border-right:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-left:0px;margin:5px;border-left:0px;display:inline;padding-right:0px;" border="0" alt="image1" src="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/image1_5EDABBC2.jpg" width="604" height="255" /></p> <p>With that, the speed of growth in data volume has kicked in harder than ever. Being able to collect, process, and analyse the kinds of volume that we're now facing means that scaling is major feature being discussed. In recent years, this meant looking at Big Data and the ways that this can hook into our existing solutions, and technologies like Hekaton have allowed us to scale up to handle huge numbers of transactions in a scale-up scenario.</p> <p>This year, though, we see scale-out having a refreshed focus. We're hearing talk of 'sharding' more, and the idea of being able to use multiple databases (including cloud-based ones) to achieve scale on demand – an elasticity that suits business more than ever.</p> <p>Most of our customers at LobsterPot see changes in the amount of business that’s going on across the year, with some having certain key days requiring orders of magnitude more traffic than on ‘normal’ days. They already scale out their websites, but data is another matter. Databases typically scale UP, not OUT.</p> <p>My work in the Analytics Platform System / Parallel Data Warehouse space makes me acutely aware of the challenges around scaling out data. When you need to perform joins between tables which have their data in different databases, on different servers, there are problems that need addressing. A lot of it happens behind the scenes through complex data movement techniques, so that it looks like a normal query. This is stuff that is hard to do through clever data </p> <p>What we’re seeing this morning are some of the ways that Microsoft is providing scale out technology in SQL Server and SQL Database. Considering they now have over a million SQL Database databases in Azure, thinking about how to leverage this technology to enhance on-prem SQL Server databases to provide a new level of hybrid is very interesting.</p> <p>One of these technologies is Stretched Tables, which we saw this morning. This is about being able to take a table in SQL Server and stretch it into SQL Databases in Azure. This means that the table will be sharded across on-prem and cloud – hot data being stored locally, and more-rarely used data being stored in the cloud. For queries that need to access data that’s in the cloud, data can can be extracted from the cloud tables, pushing predicates down to pull back part of the data, transparently (as far as the user is concerned). </p> <p>This is not like using linked servers and views, handling inserts with triggers. This is achieving hybrid behind the scenes, giving users a logical layer they can query to access their information whether it’s local or in the cloud. </p> <p>Until now, I’ve always felt that ‘hybrid’ has been about using some components locally and other components in the cloud. But what we’re seeing now are ways that ‘hybrid’ can mean that we have the core of our database – the tables themselves – are handled in a hybrid way.</p> <p>Exciting times ahead…</p> <p><a href="http://twitter.com/rob_farley" target="_blank">@rob_farley</a></p>Why I am not going to PASS this yearhttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson/archive/2014/10/25/why-i-am-not-going-to-pass-this-year.aspxSat, 25 Oct 2014 19:05:00 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:56008drsql<P class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>This is going to be one of my toughest non-technical posts ever. And the reason it will be difficult will have an ancillary relationship to the </FONT><A href="http://www.drugs.com/lortab.html"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Lortabs</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> I have been taking for the last two days. It has everything to do with me being at home while the </FONT><A href="http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/About.aspx"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>2014 PASS Summit</FONT></A><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3> is going on. Previously, the only Summit I had missed was the first one in Chicago. I had just changed jobs, so they wouldn’t pay my way yet. They did send me to the Summit in London that directly followed, which wasn’t a bad trade since that is the one and only time I have travelled outside the country.&nbsp;</FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoTitle style="MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt;"><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3><o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT>&nbsp;</P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>So what is the reason I won’t be there? <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>This is the first year in at least 6 or 7 that I did not put in a session to speak at the PASS Summit. I wanted to enjoy the experience and not have the pressure of a session or two hanging over me from July to October. I had volunteered for the program committee, so I figured I would have plenty to do. Practicing the session over and over, getting it just right (or at least really, really close to right). My status as a speaker has nothing to do with why I am not attending. <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>For the first time in many years, we will not be having a </FONT><A href="http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2013/Connect/EveningEvents/Quizbowl.aspx"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>Quiz Bowl</FONT></A><FONT size=3 face=Calibri> during the Welcome Reception. While I am sad to see it go, as it was a lot of fun to work all of these years with Board Member Tim Ford (</FONT><A href="https://twitter.com/sqlagentman"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>@sqlagentman</FONT></A><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>), this really has nothing to do with it. Not having to worry about writing questions and setting up the game is certainly not keeping me away from the Summit.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>This year, the dates for the </FONT><A href="http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/summit.aspx"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>MVP Summit</FONT></A><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3> overlap with the PASS Summit. I didn’t choose MVP over PASS, as PASS and Microsoft worked out a wonderful situation where we were going to be able to attend both, over 7 glorious days. The date of the MVP Summit is not why I am missing PASS this year. I am missing it too!<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>In fact, no other minor details would even somewhat hold me back (not long flights, too soon after Halloween, too much salmon,&nbsp;not close enough to Thanksgiving, too few politics, too rainy, too long, too short, too many politics,&nbsp; not enough salmon, etc). The SQL PASS Summit is one of my favorite weeks of the year come rain or shine. I made my hotel reservations the minute I heard the announcement of the dates. I blogged about how much I am looking forward to attending along with some advice for attendees </FONT><A href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson/archive/2014/10/07/pass-summit-attendance-advice.aspx"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>here on sqlblog.com</FONT></A><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>, and had several volunteer jobs set up including working at the community zone, two sessions for folks wanting to learn how to write a better abstract, and a table during the Birds of a Feather Lunch. I clearly haven’t fallen out of love with PASS.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>It certainly isn’t the people at PASS. I love to see all of my online SQL Server friends in person, and meet new ones to boot. I have met a lot of amazing people over the years, and I expected to meet a lot more this year. And while online friends you never meet in person are great, getting the chance to shake a hand, break some bread, etc, makes them seem more real when you see them online.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>So if you came to this blog looking for me to bash on PASS and the Summit, you are in the wrong place. No, as I attempted to foreshadow, I won’t be attending the PASS Summit for a</FONT></FONT><FONT face=Calibri><FONT size=3>&nbsp;medical reason. I had a total hip replacement done back in May of 2009. 2009’s PASS Summit was a big milestone in my recovery. It was where I finally stretched my legs and was walking (for me) considerable distances comfortably. At the same time, it was where I learned my limits as&nbsp;about midway through, I started experiencing pain and ended up needing a scooter to get around Seattle for my post-conference session and dinner. <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>Fast forward to Thursday, October 21. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun:yes;">&nbsp;</SPAN>Something gave way in my leg, and I was unable to walk. Turned out the hip replacement hardware had broken. So, instead of PASS, I am having surgery Monday morning to repair that hip replacement device with a new one. My surgeon quickly nixed travelling the next week after surgery (in good humor… and he kind of wanted my </FONT><A href="http://www.nashvillesymphony.org/tickets/concert/phantom-of-the-opera?deeplink=buytix&amp;prodid=4353&amp;perfid=4354"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>symphony tickets</FONT></A><FONT size=3><FONT face=Calibri> for Tuesday </FONT><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY:Wingdings;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Wingdings;"><SPAN style="mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Wingdings;">J</SPAN></SPAN><FONT face=Calibri>), so PASS is out. Luckily while the </FONT></FONT><A href="http://twitter.com/search?q=sqlpass"><FONT color=#0563c1 size=3 face=Calibri>twitterverse</FONT></A><FONT size=3><FONT face=Calibri> is exploding with PASS excitement, I will be at home and I won’t really notice, thanks to my little friends I introduced in the first paragraph… Lortabs.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN:0in 0in 8pt;"><I style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal;"><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>Note: If you are keen to get info about how things go for me, I may tweet some at @drsql, and my wife @valdavidson will tweet occasionally as well.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun:yes;">&nbsp; </SPAN>Thanks!</FONT><o:p></o:p></I></P>Less than a month away...http://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/archive/2014/10/08/less-than-a-month-away.aspxThu, 09 Oct 2014 02:16:23 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:55681rob_farley<p>The PASS Summit for 2014 is nearly upon us, and the MVP Summit is immediately prior, in the same week and the same city. This is my first MVP Summit since early 2008. I’ve been invited every year, but I simply haven’t prioritised it. I’ve been awarded MVP status every year since 2006 (just received my ninth award), but in 2009 and 2010 I attended SQLBits in the UK, and have been to every PASS Summit since then. This year, it’s great that I get to do both Summits in the same trip, but if I get to choose just one, then it’s an easy decision.</p> <p>So let me tell you why the PASS Summit is the bigger priority for me.</p> <p><strong>Number of people</strong></p> <p>Actually, the PASS Summit isn’t that much larger than the MVP Summit, but the MVP Summit has thousands of non-SQL MVPs, and only a few hundred in the SQL space. Because of this, the ‘average conversation with a stranger’ is very different. While it can be fascinating to meet someone who is an MVP for File System Storage, the PASS Summit has me surrounded by people who do what I do, and it makes for more better conversations as I learn about who people are and what they do.</p> <p><strong>Access to Microsoft</strong></p> <p>The NDA content that MVPs learn at the MVP Summit is good, but the PASS Summit will have content about every-SQL-thing you ever want. The same Microsoft people who present at the MVP Summit are also at the PASS Summit, and dedicate time to the SQL Clinic, which means that you can spend even more time working through ideas and problems with them. You don’t get this at the MVP Summit.</p> <p><strong>Non-exclusivity</strong></p> <p>Obviously not everyone can go to the MVP Summit, as it’s a privilege that comes as part of the MVP award each year (although it’s hardly ‘free’ when you have to fly there from Australia). While it may seem like an exclusive event is going to be, well, exclusive, most MVPs are all about the wider community, and thrive on being around non-MVPs. There are less than 400 SQL MVPs around the world, and ten times that number of SQL experts at the Summit. While some of the top experts might be MVPs, a lot of them are not, and the PASS Summit is a chance to meet those people each year.</p> <p><strong>Content from the best</strong></p> <p>The MVP Summit has presentations from people who work on the product. At my first MVP Summit, this was a huge deal. And it’s still good to hear what these guys are thinking, under NDA, when they can actually go into detail that they know won’t leave the room. But you don’t get to hear from Paul White at the MVP Summit, or Erin Stellato, or Julie Koesmarno, or any of the other non-Microsoft presenters. The PASS Summit gives the best of both worlds.</p> <p>I’m really looking forward to the MVP Summit. I’ve missed the last six, and it’s been too long. MVP Summits were when I met some of my oldest SQL friends, such as Kalen Delaney, Adam Machanic, Simon Sabin, Paul &amp; Kimberly, and Jamie Thomson. The opportunities are excellent. But the PASS Summit is what the community is about. </p> <p>MVPs are MVPs because of the community – and that’s what the PASS Summit is about. That’s the one I’m looking forward to the most.</p> <p><a href="http://twitter.com/rob_farley" target="_blank">@rob_farley</a></p>Speaking this weekend at SQL Saturday 286 - Louisvillehttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson/archive/2014/06/19/speaking-this-weekend-at-sql-saturday-286-louisville.aspxFri, 20 Jun 2014 03:20:00 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:54243drsql<p>Wow, where does the time go? Hope I see every reader there in Louisville this weekend for&nbsp;a lovely time. Say you live in Alaska and it would be too far to go in one day? Hey, we all have our problems (<em>and don't tell anyone, but I am going to try to finish up video versions of these sessions by the end of the year.. shh</em>.)</p><p>I will be doing my session on Database Design Fundamentals and How to Write a DML Trigger, both sessions I have done quite often of late, and I really like how they work now. I have a bit of a reputation as a slide/code tinkerer and this time is no different, but the biggest thing I have settled on is how I deal with presentation like these, where honestly the subject is more than a 1 hour session can handle. Homework.</p><p>I will cover the fundamentals of whatever topic&nbsp;in slides, and then demo as much code as I have time, but the rest is homework. I got the idea when I was prepping to speak to the Richmond User Group, as I was flip flopping between showing some slides and showing code. I realized that the slides would explain the fundamentals better than slogging through the internals of the code directly, and that when I attend sessions with a lot of code, all I am sitting there thinking is "man, I want that code".&nbsp; So I try to comment the code to make it self explanatory, run the code before each presentation, enhance it as I have time to, show you enough of the code to get you started, and then give it to you to play with (and if you want to pick it apart, email me at <a href="mailto:drsql@hotmail.com">drsql@hotmail.com</a>, I LOVE constructive criticism. &nbsp;</p><p>I post all of my slides and code on my website (<a href="http://drsql.org">http://drsql.org</a>)&nbsp;not just because it is part of a presentation, or to make myself feel cool, but mostly so I can reference it as I need it. I use my <a href="http://s/Snippets.aspx">code snippets</a> all of the time when coding, and I try to keep them up to the version I am using (or writing about as it were.) So hopefully, I see you and get to explain the fundamentals, then the (rather wordy at times) slides are there for reference, and the code is there to get you started practicing on your own. Homework.</p><p>The abstracts for this weekend's presentations:&nbsp;</p><p><span id="ContentPlaceHolder1_lblSessionTitle">Database Design Fundamentals</span> </p><p><span id="ContentPlaceHolder1_lblDescription">In this session I will give an overview of how to design a database, including the common normal forms and why they should matter to you if you are creating or modifying SQL Server databases. Data should be easy to work with in SQL Server if the database has been organized as close as possible to the standards of normalization that have been proven for many years. Many common T-SQL programming "difficulties" are the result of struggling against the way data should be structured and can be avoided by applying the basic normalization techniques and are obvious things that you find yourself struggling with time and again (i.e. using the SUBSTRING function in a WHERE clause meaning you can't use an index efficiently).&nbsp;</span></p><p><span id="ContentPlaceHolder1_lblSessionTitle">How to Write a DML Trigger</span> </p><p><span id="ContentPlaceHolder1_lblDescription">Triggers are extremely powerful and useful (if somewhat rarely needed) objects that are coded very similar to a common stored procedure. Yet for their similarity, there are some very important differences that need to be understood. In this session, I will walk through what goes into writing a robust DML trigger, starting with a simple version of a trigger, and working through some very useful applications of DML Triggers..</span>&nbsp;</p><p><span id="ContentPlaceHolder1_lblDescription"></span>&nbsp;</p>